Metersteiner Beer Manager

The 1997 DOS game in your browser, as it was. Play

Playing

Click to skip the intro, then choose Start new game in the start menu and type your name. You run a brewery company against three computer opponents: buy a brewery on the main map, build brewing plants and warehouses on the brewery map, sign purchasers and advertising on the city maps, and buy trucks to deliver the beer. The game ends when you go bankrupt or after forty years.

The game explains itself: Instructions in the start menu opens the original instruction book, and a right click on almost anything opens the page about it. With tips on, a short tutorial guides your first steps. The game's speed is set in Game speed (start menu) or in the System menu.

The two modes

• Original (the default): the 1997 game exactly, its rules, timing and bugs included.
• Fix original bugs (the switch beside the picture): new games correct the original's bugs, such as trucks that strand at a sold brewery or messages that never appear. A game keeps the mode it was started with; each mode has its own highscore table.

Saving, loading, import and export

• The ten save slots are kept in this browser (local storage). Save from the System menu during a game; load from Load in the start menu. Private windows and cleared site data lose them.
• Export (beside the picture) writes a slot as BMSG1.BMD … BMSG10.BMD, the original's own format: copy it into a DOS installation and load it there. Import takes such a file into the chosen slot. Imported games continue in the original mode.

The mouse

Like the DOS game, the game keeps the cursor inside its windows. To do that, the first click captures the mouse pointer: it then moves only the game's cursor. Press Esc to release it; the next click captures it again. If you prefer the normal pointer, untick Capture mouse beside the picture or add ?capture=off to the address.

Sound

Untick Sound beside the picture (or add ?sound=off to the address) to silence the music and the sound effects; ?sound=on or the tick brings them back, and the choice is remembered. The game itself is not affected: it plays exactly the same with or without sound. The music and the sound effects can also be switched one by one in the game's own Effects menu.

Settings beside the picture

The small panel at the bottom right (shown when the window leaves room beside the picture) holds the mouse capture, the sound, the mode switch, export and import, and Download run log: the record of your inputs in the game you are playing. If something goes wrong, attach that file to your report: it replays your game exactly.

Credits

Metersteiner Beer Manager, 1997. The music is played by an emulation of the OPL3 sound chip; the third-party software in this page and its licences: third-party-licenses.txt.